The human brain is pretty amazing, capable of some truly astounding things. It’s also terribly unreliable and that’s why technology can be so useful. And the increasing versatility of the modern day smartphone is really helping to make our lives that much better and more organized.

A couple of weeks ago, we listed some of the best iPhone apps to help you get more done. Improving productivity is great, but what about providing some help for your memory too? If you have the unfortunate habit of forgetting important things, you’ll want some of these free iPhone apps to help you remember things better.

Alarmed

Yes, while it may be true that the iPhone already has a clock and alarm function built into it, it’s not nearly as robust as what you can get out of Alarmed. What this does is produce pop-up reminder alerts for the things that matter in your life, including the ability to set up repeat scheduling and flexible snoozing. Need to take out the trash on Wednesday nights? Alarmed can remind you. This app is compatible with Siri and you can choose from over 80-different custom sounds. The integrated timer is useful for cooking or laundry too, so you don’t leave your roast burning or your clean clothes soaking.

Humin

What was the name of that guy from that company that you met a couple of weeks ago at that conference? And who was that girl that I met at the bar last night that I think said she was from Houston? As your contact list gets increasingly overflowing, it can be difficult to remember the names of people. With Humin, you can search your contacts based on other criteria, like the questions above. It’ll also merge duplicate contacts, so you don’t have three different listings for the same person.

Thinglist

There’s no shortage of “to-do list” apps on the iPhone and this isn’t meant to detract from any of those. You can still use them for project management and shopping lists. The goal of Thinglist is more about helping you remember things that are a little more sporadic and random. You can maintain a list of restaurants you want to try, for example, or books you want to read. The so-called “want-to-do” list is organized by category, so it’s easy to find and remember things you want to do.

Little Memory

It has been proven time and again that eyewitness testimony is fallible and unreliable. People can unwittingly twist their memories, changing key facts and little details without even realizing it. To help you remember things from those precious moments, there is a little iPhone app called Little Memory. You could say it’s like a diary or journal with bite-sized stories, working “as a time capsule; it’s like tweeting your future self.” You can use it to remind yourself of treasured anniversaries, seeing what happened in your life on this day last year, last month, or even last week.

Mint Bills & Money

We had previously written about some iPhone apps to help you manage your money and one of the biggest names in the space has an app for reminding you to pay your bills too. Mint Bills & Money makes sure you never miss a bill payment so that you can avoid those nasty overage and late fees. Working within the Mint ecosystem, it’ll help you keep tabs on your bank accounts and credit cards too, paying your bills directly from within the app. Even better, you can pre-schedule your bill payments ahead of time and get alerts when you’re getting too close to your credit card limit or if your checking account balance gets too low.